Cape Breton Post February 09, 2009 Novel provides insight into what life was like in Cape Breton in the 1870s LEROY PEACH The Cape Breton Post Edith Jessie Archibald's 1931 novel "The Token," set in Port Morien in the early 1870s, reveals much about the culture of Cape Breton at that time. First of all, we learn something of the different strata of society, their customs and beliefs. For example, the underground manager, Dan Matheson, lives in a well-appointed house, the miners in draughty cottages. The retired farmer Angus MacRory has an extensive farm, with "the finest house around," near False Bay Beach - an estate called "Moorlands." The characters are well drawn. Angus MacRory is described as a "dour and austere" elder who makes a priority of the rules of the kirk. The skeptical Alan Carmichael rejects Calvinism. The flighty Sheila Morrison embraces the modern over the religious. Tyler Norton is a Boston dandy with contempt for Cape Breton's Scottish customs. Archibald has a great ear for dialect and accent and an understanding of the times, especially the isolation of Cape Bretoners. All the less refined members of Grandport speak with a pronounced brogue. Old Chon Duncanson has been to the "Boshton Shtates." He says, "'Tis a terrible ways aff, and manI'm saying - for it iss maself has been more as two times ofer that weary lang road!" He is one of a few people who leave the island. The scenario which best illustrates the times is the "tucking frolic," nowadays called the milling frolic. Jessie Archibald describes it with amusement and insight. It represented the 19th century version of party time. On a winter night, the young set come by horse and sleigh to Moorlands dressed to the nines. The ladies especially wear long, colourful gowns with bustles. Sheila Morrison "wore a Stuart tartan skirt of finest homespun." In fact the author says, "Those were the days when everyone wore homespun." One guest named Lizzie Ellen Blaisdell, however, has returned from Boston with the latest fashion, a crinoline, which makes her colourful gown voluminous. She performs with her partner the latest Yankee dance called The Dip. Young people like it; Angus MacRory is scandalized. The main object of the frolic is to shrink on a long table the lengthy "bolt of homespun." The hidden agenda is, of course, romance. As the cloth is worked back and forth, singers sing lengthy Gaelic songs and Scottish ballads. They intersperse these offerings with "Yankee songs" from Boston, one of which is "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," an 1864 civil war composition. The frolic ends in a supper and a dance, with much playing on the violin. Food is plentiful at Moorlands - huge pieces of beef roasted on a revolving "jack" suspended from a "crane" and in the chimney home cured hams. The frolic produces an interesting phenomenon common at the time. Angus MacRory, objecting to the worldliness of the participants, especially Lizzie Ellen, and the conflict between Alan and Tyler, goes into a trance and sees the devil standing by Alan with blood on his hands. He possesses what still exists today, "second sight." In sum, Archibald portrays a relatively static society, communal, with little mobility, and a set of values informed by strict religious beliefs and a definite class system. Yet there is some reaching after change. Although her plot leaves much to be desired, she writes of life in the 1870s with intelligence, humour and sympathy. LeRoy Peach lives in Port Morien and may be reached at leroy_peach@yahoo.ca. His column appears every week in the Cape Breton Post